As the semiconductor industry continues to grow, the need to develop increasingly complex integrated circuit devices with smaller feature sizes and dimensions has been highly sought after. Driven by the demand for high performance, such integrated circuit devices are developed to higher integration. In accordance with high integration of integrated circuit devices, more leads and circuits are required, which increases noise.
Generally, passive electrical components such as resistors have been incorporated in an integrated circuit device to eliminate noise and achieve the requirements for electrical characteristics of the integrated circuit device. For example, resistors have been used in many integrated circuit structures (e.g., resistor-capacitor (RC) oscillators, current limitation resistance, electrostatic discharge (ESD) protect, RF backend drive (RF post drivers), on-chip termination, impedance matching, etc.) to provide effective resistance function at lower cost. However, resistors often exhibit high sheet resistance, and joule heating of these resistors can negatively impact circuit performance and increase the chances of metal electromigration wear-out in the integrated circuit device. This may lead to eventual failure of electrical components in the integrated circuit device.